Why Some Autonomous Cars Are Going to Avoid the Internet

Alphabet’s autonomous car company, Waymo, has admitted that it keeps its cars offline to prevent them from being hacked.

Self-driving cars are essentially large computers on wheels. No surprise, then, that some of them will be kept offline in the name of security.

John Krafcik, the CEO of Alphabet’s self-driving car company, Waymo, explained to the Financial Times (paywall) that its vehicles only occasionally connect to the Internet. “Our cars communicate with the outside world only when they need to, so there isn’t a continuous line that’s able to be hacked, going into the car,” he told the newspaper.

That policy shouldn’t come as a huge surprise. In 2015, security researchers demonstrated that they could remotely hack into the computer systems aboard a Jeep Cherokee and disable its brakes while a driver was at the wheel. Incidents like that no doubt serve to make drivers—and automakers—nervous about handing full control over to computerized vehicles if they're connected to the Internet.

Waymo's CEO, John Krafcik, doesn't want his cars to be hacked.

Waymo is able to take its cars offline because its crucial systems are all stored on local computers aboard the car. And since those systems are performing the same job as a human driver—that is, taking in information about the roadway and making decisions about how to behave—there's no need for it to pull data down from the cloud at every turn.

There are, of course, already connected cars on the road. Tesla’s vehicles, for example, are not only connected to the Internet, but also have some self-driving capability. As our own Will Knight has explained, Elon Musk’s automaker increases the security of its vehicles by using separate computer systems to control different aspects of the car.

But if we’ve learned anything from the rise of connected devices, it’s that hackers are a resourceful bunch who can invariably find a flaw. These days, the world’s largest computer security conference, Defcon, features a whole section dedicated to car hacking. Separating computer systems is a start, but a committed hacker could still find a vulnerability.

For now, then, the prospect of autonomous cars being hacked remains an open problem. Waymo’s solution, of simply keeping the car offline as much of the time as possible, works for now. But to reap the benefits of connecting cars, it can’t remain the case. That will mean facing up to hackers and finding other ways of improving security, rather than hiding offline.

Jamie CondliffeI’m the editor of news and commentary for MIT Technology Review. I put together our daily e-mail newsletter, The Download, from my base in London before everyone in the U.S. manages to wake up. I previously worked at New Scientist and Gizmodo, and I hold a PhD in engineering science from Oxford University.